This morning, a group of us staying in the village took a boat up to a remote beach called Ruarwe. It was wretchedly overcrowded and we looked like a group of refugees escaping an oppressive regime, like those old B/W photographs of immigrants. Within10 minutes of our journey, someone mentioned that we might want to consider the hole drawing water into the boat. The captain just handed us two buckets without pausing to look at the crack. As we were baling the water out, someone accidentally spilled the beans. We had brought a pot of Kidney beans with us for lunch and now they were floating in the gathering water at the floor of the boat. It looked revolting, like someone had just dropped their boys off at the pool, and gave me a fresh wave of nausea.
90 minutes later, we arrived at a small bay with at least 50 children welcoming us, waving wildly and singing. In anticipation of the weekly Wednesday boatload of “muzungu’s” (Swahili for white person), they came out in force knowing we would have food & games. As we offloaded, each one raced up to the boat and grabbed each of our hands to lead us onto the sand. All of them beaming with pure glee. Most of them were between age 5 to 14, torn ratty clothing and drippy snot noses, with the occasional crying naked 2 year old.
After our beans & rice lunch, we had some leftover fruit which we offered them. What happened next was disturbing. They all converged on a single banana and tore it apart, all desperately vying for a bit, as if they hadn’t eaten in a week. Looking at their bodies, they did have that skinny frame with distended stomach appearance that most undernourished kids have. But they were full of smiles and joy and that made me feel even more awful.
After setting up two makeshift goalposts with reed poles sunk into the sand, we quickly got a game of beach soccer going. It was Team Malaria (honkies) vs. Team Malnutrition (locals). They whupped us but since they were illiterate and couldn’t count, I told them we scored 5 goals and they only had 3. Afterwards, someone broke out a Frisbee and we started a toss. The kids looked perplexed, watching white people throw a plastic spinning disc to each other. They didn’t quite grasp the concept, as most of them would throw it and then frenziedly race after it to try to catch it on the other end.
One timid kid took to me, following me around but too bashful to say anything. He looked about 7, but small for his age. He was a good soccer player but was often bullied by other big kids. I saw a lot of myself in him. He held my hand and walked me down the beach to the boat. “You tomorrow coming?” he asked me, with kid brother affection. I gave him a few small items from my backpack and as I walked away, I noticed him sniffing his hand (wondering what a white person smells like).
After a few glorious hours relaxing, we left to a big send-off. They all grouped together and waved manically while screaming any English words they knew, “Bye-Bye”, “Hello”, “Please”, and “How are you?”. They didn’t stop until we were out of sight. On the way back home in the bean boat, I pulled aside our local guide and asked him if all those kids were suffering from starvation. He laughed at my melodramatic insinuation. “Those bellies are full of fish and cassava (local staple root). They eat better than most on the mainland. They have an endless source of protein from the lake and have ideal growing conditions for crops.”
“Then why did they ravish that banana?”
“Because it came from the hands of white people, an exotic sub-species of human rarely seen around here.”
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